Splendor
by Nate Slattery
Summary: Immortality represents the impossible and perfect combination of youth and age.
1. Part One

_Part One_

_Splendor_

Nathaniel Slattery

**Scene 1**

He pushed his blanket away. The slab of metal clattered as it fell out of the car and onto the concrete. Other people may have had something to say about him calling it his blanket, but he hadn't seen any people, real people, in twenty-two years. It was a curved piece of metal covered on the concave side with some kind of cloth. He assumed it was a door from a car.

He pulled himself off his bed. His bed was like his blanket, but bigger, and both were bigger than him. When he slept in them, they looked like any other metal debris on the street. No one walking by would suspect a person to be sleeping in it. And it was in a car.

He pulled a knife out of the car and cut the last tatters of his shirt up. He stowed those in his pack, fuel for the fire that would cook his food. That was his last shirt, and it had been a damn good one.

Daved ate a customary breakfast with a steep alcohol content and started to wake up. Just Daved. His last name made too many false promises.

Daved watched a rat paw at something a few meters away. He shot at it. Following the body with his eyes, Daved shot it again, and it skidded down the street minus its limbs.

He went to work on the dilapidated engine of the car he'd slept in. Rats were just one of the pests that fed on death and somehow survived the holocaust. Humans were the chief ones. The main difference was the sounds they made. Rats made a sort of snorting squeal. Humans made more pitiful noises.

Loud pitiful noises, inquiring and threatening from a safe distance. Today they brought weapons, as if they'd somehow gotten over their inability to learn, or, maybe, evolution had kicked in. Daved had certainly killed enough of the dumb ones.

He ignored them. These weren't people. They weren't respectable. The ones you could respect were the ones that cowered in their homes: these were the ones that searched the former out. Ironic, how intelligence is bred in horizontal lines in times of wretchedness, the only time it would do any good. He grabbed a cloth and started wiping his hands off.

"Whatcha' doin' out here all alone, Motherfucker? Workin' on these piece-of-shit cars? Hangin' out with them rats? Tell you what, how's about we paint this here car for you? With your blood?"

He smiled at them, partly because the cliché actually entertained him. There were just two of them. One was evidently leading, as he was the one that talked and carried the bigger gun, while the other stood back a little way holding a handgun. The first held a rifle. He was wearing mismatching clothing and decorations that were meant to scare, with a yellowed white mask painted to look like it was stained in blood. The other was the same without the mask.

The runt looked hesitant. He stared at Daved, as if in recognition, and tried to get his friend's attention.

Jack turned and waved his rifle around. In that instant, they both could have been killed, but Daved was enjoying the show.

"That's Moth." Daved's smile twitched. "Look at this," Garrett pulled a dirty, rolled up, colorful sheaf of papers from his back pocket and threw it to Jack.

Daved leaned in to get a look. "They got a magazine now, huh? Who cared that much?"

Jack waved his gun back at Daved. "Shut up! Fucker! I don't care if you're fucking Superman! You just shut the fuck-" His last wishes ended with a loud crack as his skull exploded outward. The blood spread out way too much, getting on Daved and his car.

The other guy didn't spend too much time waiting around. Of course, that just made the shot a bit off target. It went through the back of his knee. The kid screamed and begged loudly, but thankfully the shooter enjoyed it as little as Daved did. A third shot.

Daved hadn't moved. It was this kind of shit that started the superhero thing, when shit just solved itself. He looked up, and a piece of debris was walking down the street hefting a long rifle. Despite himself, he kept smiling.

It was usually a good idea to smile until you knew a person.

**Scene 2**

"Ever been to Europe?" said Dafram. Daved didn't hate Dafram, and he hated most people.

"Europe? What the hell is going on in Europe? Tourism issues?" Daved sat in his car with his elbows on his knees outside of the car. An automatic rifle set not far from him in the car, and he considered, for a moment, using it. He didn't _like_ Dafram, either. For one thing, the man had a goofy name. It sounded sarcastically foreign. Right now he was leaning against the back seat's door next to Daved. He was tall, even taller in his Armac-issued recon suit. The camouflage graphics had flickered away by now, and he had removed his helmet. Right now he stood almost seven feet, a good eight inches taller than reality.

"Russians, that's what. In Germany. What did you think just 'cause the world ended we'd stop fuckin' killin' each other? Nah. War's not like that. It's stubborn." Despite the cynicism, Daved remembered the bastard being one hell of a patriot. He grunted to his own thoughts, and Dafram seemed to take it as answer enough to his words. "One Russian in particular, Arseny Petrov."

"Wow that name's about as easy as they come to Russians. You tell me why I should. And don't give me that god damned speech about my country and its pride. Look around you! What fucking kind of country is left to fight for? And on a different continent, too?"

"You should know by now that 'speech' was just for recruits. No one really believes it. It's just a good way to get 'em to die for us." Maybe he wasn't so nationalistic, at least not anymore. Maybe he was just a good liar. "Here's why you should do it. The Fuckerski's mad that's why. Damn Ruskies need to learn how to screen their recruits. Anyways, you know them Russian scientists got a whole buncha' radiated things locked up for study, right?"

"How the fuck did fiends get to Germany?"

"Hopped a boat, plane, fuckin' Ruskies came here and got 'em: how should I know? They are a lot different than good ol' American stock though, look like polar bears on two feet. Angry polar bears. Maybe they evolved somewhere down the line, or maybe they actually _were_ polar bears somewhere down the line."

"So what's this guy doing with the polar bears in the lab? Bestiality?"

Dafram laughed and coughed an expletive, presumably about the cough. "Shit, no! Don't get that image in my head. That's probably why they're studying them. Anyways, no. And they're not in Germany."

"Well, why'd you even mention them then?"

"Cause this guy's trying to get the German scientists to make the fiends work for them. We don't want that, it smacks of "psychological weaponry", and we hold the corner on that market. So kill him, and do the Russians a favor."

"Sounds like a mighty complicated job, buddy. What did you say you were paying?"

"You mean you don't want to do this for the good of mankind?"

"You're hilarious."

"I know I am. Well, besides the scenic vacation, and any supplies you ask for, we'll give you six thousand."

"I don't want six thousand."

Dafram spluttered. Six thousand was a ridiculous payment, and would be enough for any soldier to sample a prostitute from every major "city" in the country, plus some fine alcohol and safe transportation, and still live the high life after that. But, even if Dafram had expected Moth to accept that, he was sure Armac leadership hadn't, or they wouldn't have offered. They liked to think they knew him. No one knew him. They all thought he was some god damned hero. He was just lucky. Bad luck to get him into shit, good luck to fix it for him. It was all the same to him.

Dafram tapped his shoulder.

He flashed him a smile that promised no good will.

He was careful, "Did you hear me? I said, 'What do you want then?'"

"I want a new shirt."

"What is that, a metaphor? We could pay you anything!"

"I'm not in the Armac's pay. And I'm not in their debt. I make my own decisions when I go over there, and if I decide to save the guy, if I decide to marry him, I'm not going to have a bunch of National Guardsmen with high opinions of themselves saying I owe them something."

Dafram left. He hoped the other meetings went so well.

**Scene 3**

He was running. Desperately.

He looked back, it was still chasing him. He shot a burst at it, but the damn thing kept coming. He tried to fire again, nothing came out. Shit!

_Grass rustling at his passage. Running. Tiring. Hunger. The scent, the intoxicating scent of meat. Hope. Pushing through bushes. Scratched. Metal bursting from prey. Pounce. Prey beating with metal-thrower. Why not throwing metal? Found weak spot. Bite. Blood flooding mouth. Pleasure._

_More hunger._

Daved could fly. Pretty well, too, but he hadn't finished learning. The local Armac HQ had offered him a pilot, but he turned them down. He didn't get to fly, ever. Planes were one of the few things that beat cars. Maybe he'd make a try at a flying car sometime.

There was the coast. Which was good, because he was supposed to be running low on fuel, if the warning sirens could be trusted. Armac may have outfitted this tiny plane with the kind of upgrades you'd need to make it across the ocean like a Lindbergh without the risk, but only barely. And, besides, Daved didn't trust anything he didn't build himself. Also, those circles around some picturesque islands probably hadn't helped him.

He quickly gave up on trying to think of a way to land, and decided to think of the safest way to crash. He gave up on that soon, too. A shallow descent cleaved into the plains below.

_Eject the magazine. Put to the side. Empty the chamber. Feel for empty chamber. Pull charging handle back. Press side retaining pin. Remove charging handle. Remove bolt-carrier. Press forward retaining pin. Put receivers and handle aside. Clean bolt-carrier. Grease and check pins. Replace charging handle. Slide bolt-carrier into upper receiver. Push charging handle forward. Replace upper receiver into lower receiver. Replace retaining pins. Clean and check trigger._

_165 seconds. Improvement._

In front of Alize Kanone lay an HK MSG-90A1 German-made high range high accuracy rifle. It was her pride and joy. Her only pride and joy. She spent hours cleaning and practicing with it.

Above the usual sound of the mindless fiends rose gunshots. Alize hefted her rifle and went to the window. She saw them falling left and right, but there was no sign of the assailant. Who was killing her guardsmen?

Someone banged on the door and more gunfire sounded, presumably down the stairs. She took an HK MP5 from her holster and fired where the knocker's foot should be. Then she burst more rounds all around the floor in case she had missed, before the intruder could fall. She opened the door, submachine gun pointing at where the head should be. She hadn't heard any sounds of pain.

She had suspected correctly. The intruder hadn't fallen, because it was a piece of debris. As she watched, it flickered into a giant black metal creature. The bullets had apparently bounced off. She pressed the muzzle of her weapon against its glass eye.

"Put your gun down!"

She pressed it harder.

"Listen, I have a job opportunity for you here. The government wants to hire you."

"Who are you?"

"I am with the United States Secret Service."

She fired.

The fiends were grateful for her gift of meat. She wondered why they never attacked her. Maybe they recognized her as one of them, even though she didn't look it. She had been there when the bombs fell, and she hadn't aged a year since then, but the ensuing radiation and chaos hadn't evolved her with the fiends into some kind of new species. Back before the bombs, before mutations in most humans had magnified evolution into a daily process rather than a centennial one, she had been living in Communist East Germany. She had been a member of the military police, and escaped over into the West before the Wall went up. There, she'd continued her career. Being unable to enlist in the demilitarized German Army, she had signed up with the British occupiers. British occupation forces had been so closely related to American forces that they fraternized constantly. Somehow she got the notion into her head that an ocean was like a rainbow, and over it there'd be a better life to live. Then the bombs fell.

That was May 12, 1989, and she had been twenty years old. She'd been twenty since 1948. Now it was 2253, and she had found out in the midst of all those dates that not only did she could shoot pretty damn well, as well as stay young. She liked guns.

She walked down to the cellar, past some fiends, and peeled open a can of peaches. Gulping them down on her way back up, she took a look outside her window. The window was on the eighth floor of what was probably a hotel, giving a good vantage point of the little group of buildings where she lived. It was comfortable. She had a room for all the guns she had managed to save from before the nukes, and the ones she had collected afterwards. There were a few rooms for just her pet dogs. There was a room for just her food. There was a room for just her uniforms. There was a room for anything.

Alize didn't use most of them. She kept pairs of clothes available in a trunk in one of her three rooms, with a tub to clean them in. She kept her food stored entirely in the cellar. She kept her guns in the same room where she slept. She gave the last room to her two pet dogs. That was all she needed. She could leave in short notice, with her boat. Her five-eleven frame may take up significant space, but her lifestyle didn't, and it was a big boat.

Scanning the horizon for threats, she brushed black hair out of her eyes. Outcasts. Walking into town. She had personally visited a nearby settlement for supplies and discovered that her land had a reputation as being a place no one came back from, and she had worked very hard to create that. But the offshoots of city scum were getting confident. One of the beauties of dealing with them was that they made great decorations to warn others away. She'd wait until they got close, first. There were half a dozen of them, and her little town sat cradled by mountainside, with one road, and open land. They wouldn't avoid her gaze, even if they'd known she was watching. Of course, somehow that metal man had managed it…

**Scene 4**

Her rifle banged against her shoulder as the outcast's throat ceased to exist. It was the last one. He had been running away, and the shot was difficult. Her job was finished for today, though. She'd sleep for a few hours then collect the guns they'd brought her and set up the bodies. Falling asleep was easy, for her.

She woke. She knew from the dim lighting in the window that it was well before when she had planned to awake. She got up quickly and grabbed a Franchi SPAS-12. Alize listened intently.

There was a buzz.

She went in the direction she thought she heard it, down the stairs. She heard it again, louder. Kanone followed it, holding her shotgun ready. It sounded like radio static.

Opening a door to an abandoned storeroom, she saw a handheld radio sitting on a crate. She carefully scanned the room, then picked up the radio.

It buzzed. "Alizia, we - you're there. Answer the - please." Static interrupted a man's voice periodically.

She picked it up and pressed the receiver. She said nothing.

"Alizia, we still have an offer for you, even if our agent is dead. Please respond.

"Go to hell."

"We have a job for you in Germany. When's the last time you've been there?"

She was silent for a long time.

"Listening."

"Right. Well, we need a man killed."

"Why?"

"He's going to kill one of our men."

"What happens when someone tries to kill me?"

"He's in Vienna."

"That's not Germany."

"We're paying a lot of money."

"Good morning, Mr. Rache."

"Good morning, Lucy. Are you ready to learn today?"

"Yeah, today I feel like maybe I'll do better. What are we learning about?"

"History. It's all I teach, Lucy." Rache laughed.

Lucy winced. "History of what?"

Rache told her that they would be learning about their own government, before the bombs. She was already heading to her seat, as if she really had no interest in the answer, and it was irrelevant to how well she'd do. It probably was.

She was ten, and about the average age for most of the children in Liam's class. There were five other classes, with their own teachers: History, Trading, Reading, Hunting, and Science. There were maybe thirty children in the whole village, and they went to every subject every day, and they were lucky that this place was intelligent enough to self-educate; once they were fifteen, they married, and started contributing to the village. The farmers produced food, the traders traded for everything needed, everyone gathered water, everyone cooked, and the hunters took care of the animals, and hunted with tools traded for by the traders. It was a small slice of simple paradise, and Liam cherished his role of helping raise its offspring.

He was happy with his life. There were none of the complications he'd seen elsewhere. He'd been here fifteen years now and no one seemed to notice that he did not age. They didn't know enough about the world to sense the anomaly. Either that or they didn't care. He wanted no more, and he wanted no less.

"Teacher!"

"What, Kendric?"

"I think I heard something."

"We all hear things, Ken-"

And then _he _heard it. Someone was screaming. That scream was enough to make Liam feel a sudden dread, and he went to the window of the small schoolhouse. As he looked out, he saw a man dressed in uniform surrounded by black metallic giants. Two were gripping Gary, a farmer, between them. The uniform seemed to be questioning him.

Apparently the questions were answered.

The officer turned his back and Gary was shot in the head. Liam turned to his students. "All of you! Hide under your desks, now! This isn't the time to argue!"  
That bit in stories where the guy gets everyone to listen to him by voicing his strong leadership, that's a joke. They burst into confused commotion. Liam tried to quiet them, their worries were loud enough to attract attention, but in the middle of his efforts, an officer, different then the one outside, strode into the schoolhouse.

"You children line up and exit the building!"  
"Who are you?" Liam approached the man, who took out a gun and pointed it back.

The kids needed someone to take care of them, while they could not. That was Liam's job, even if no one else thought so. The man dropped his gun. The world needs its kids, and it needs them brought up right. If you weren't willing to do anything to help them, then you weren't worth the spittle God invested in you. The man's eyes closed. These children weren't perfect, because they weren't grown yet. Liam would help them become good enough to fix this world. The man fell, and Liam caught the falling gun. No matter what you messed up in your lifetime, you could always get a second chance. Just give it to them.

The children were cowering under their seats. One looked at him with animal fear in her eyes. He turned, and there was a dead man in front of him. His hand bent at an unnatural angle, and a stream of blood rushed from his broken temple, pooling under him and soaking his no longer pristine uniform. Liam held a gun. There was banging on the door.

He crashed through the door and knocked someone down into the dust. Those giants he had seen before were encircling him now. He swung his gun at them. There were still people to protect.

**Scene 5**

White spray flew up all around Alize as her boat cut swathes through the ocean waters. She liked her boat, like she had her dogs, but it wasn't her pride and joy. She wished she could take her rifle out and clean it, but she didn't want to let it get wet when she didn't have to, and the ocean wind was heavy with water. All she felt safe working with was the AK-47 rifle, ever-reliable. She remembered when the thing had first been invented, right before video games in her memory. It was featured in games like white was featured in snow. Not that she had played them, but she knew some kids in her time, and back then, there was no escaping the great American advertising mechanism. The rifle had a reputation for being shoddy, which was mostly due to wartime hatred and was laughable in its complete disagreement with reality. It was one of her favorites; of course, they were all her favorites now. She hadn't brought along any that weren't.

The dogs were another thing she'd left behind, with all the food it didn't make sense to bring. Besides weapons, she'd brought a pair or two of clothes. She'd known that most of this journey was going to be on land, but having a cache of supplies was always useful, no matter where it was, and so her boat held more than she would be able to carry.

Kanone saw the coastline in the distance. She marveled again at the resources the Realm sported: they had supply stops at a number of islands across the ocean. They claimed to be the government, but she didn't believe that was the entire story. If there was a government, then somehow there'd have to still be a country. She was pretty sure one couldn't die without the other. Still, there was no other explanation for their suspicious quantity of resources.

She had seen those resources personally; it was the only way she had made it across tumultuous currents. That and luck: there had been close calls and storms in double the frequency of supply stops. But it was over now, and Alize was glad. She wondered yet again why she was going to land at that jutting peninsula of a growth off of the southwest of Europe. It seemed simpler to her to enter the sea, or go north and land in France. Perhaps the cost of naval travel was too much to justify the speedier trip: even the government had to have its limits.

She docked at a little wooden port and some grunts in light uniforms tied up her boat. She wasn't comfortable with leaving it here, but she had no other option. She loaded up a pack and proceeded to a ramshackle building that one of the soldiers directed her to. She assumed she'd be briefed there.

The door creaked open uncomfortably, and she paused. A conversation seemed to have been interrupted, as an officer with a decorated uniform and a woman looked up at her. He dismissed her with a hand gesture, and she slid off of his desk and pushed past Alize. She watched her go.

Turning back to the man, she was waved to a seat in front of his desk. "I assume you know what you're here for. Hell, probably more than me."

She stared him in the eyes.

"Well, of course you do. Your route is north, on road. There shouldn't be any traffic; these parts are abandoned. There's a town where you can resupply a bit, but don't count on it. Eventually there will be another command post. Just keep walking until you get there, simple enough. Any questions?"

"No."

"Well, hope you like to hike."

**Scene 6**

There was pain.

Now, there was smell: a horrid, decaying smell; he couldn't breath. His face was hot.

There was something on top of him, sMothring him. He tried to push it and his arms protested. Gathering his strength, telling himself that he still might die, he hefted it off. Standing up was too much, he drifted off again.

This time he managed. He looked around, dazed. He remembered things. His name came first: Liam. It felt new. Liam Rache. It sat like a snake on his tongue.

Everything around him was burnt, or burning.

Dead, or dying.

He saw life burning away. It had been his. But it had been taken from him, before it was lit on fire. Now it was just others' life, and it wouldn't even be that for much longer.

Swaying slightly, he looked down and grabbed his head. He saw at his feet what had sMothred him. It was a body. He recognized the face.

He went lightheaded and almost collapsed again, this time without a blow to the back of the head. He didn't remember anything after leaving the school house, but there was a lump, and it wasn't hard to piece together.

He walked around mindlessly, trying to recognize his old home. He saw the schoolhouse, went and picked up that gun. He saw dead everywhere, not a one of them went unrecognized. He saw children.

There were piles of bodies. The wreckage was haphazard, but there was a sick sense of order to it. Like a stage. He pretended it was for him. After all, he'd survived. Maybe they were bitter that he killed an officer.

He came to another pile, and sat on someone's charred belly. No, he was just a teacher. They thought he had been dead. Why else would he have ended up in one of these piles. The pile under him groaned. He must have just been lucky, surviving this. Bad luck. Much better to have been killed with the rest of these simple people.

Dead bodies didn't groan. He got up, entertaining a sad trickle of hope that told him he had definitely heard something. He moved the bodies quickly: they were dead; they didn't require grace.

At the very bottom was a girl. She was burned like everything else, he couldn't even recognize her face. But she talked.

"Isher… Ray…" Barely.

He recognized the voice of Lucy. She was crying, but no tears came out. Her inability to talk didn't stop her from asking him what was going on, telling him that she was in pain. She was dying, slowly, cruelly. Like a little present from whatever madman controlled this world, she lay there. Metal was cold in his hands, despite everything burning around it. He told her to close her eyes.

She closed her eyes.

Tyler wanted to be surprised by what he saw, shocked and distraught even, but he was a soldier. This wasn't the first time he'd seen a civilian settlement torched, even the civilians themselves. Hell, he'd usually been partly to blame.

They were driving between command posts when they found the village. It was a small trading stop. Now people along this route would have to figure how to pack twice the supplies and make them last twice as long. It looked like there were no survivors. Then again, he couldn't really tell from the outskirts.

"I'm going in for a closer look. Hold the fort." His gunner grunted at him. There was hardly any threat out in the middle of no where like this. Then again, who'd burned that village, if there was nothing hostile?

"Look, buddy, if you don't want to tell me what happened here it's alright."

Liam didn't say anything. He sat in the passenger seat of some kind of car. A soldier had found him kneeling next to a child's corpse, and invited him for a ride. Liam almost shot him. But his suit didn't look like the ones he had seen. Supposedly, this man's employers offered the capacity for revenge.

He had been running his finger over the pistol's lettering. It was still ingrained with dried blood after three hours of silence and working his fingernails into the recesses. Apparently that silence had been too long for the driver, because he had decided to try and fill it. Liam preferred the man standing up in the back of the trunk, operating a gigantic gun. Whom never said a thing, just stood there and watched the horizon, with Rache admiring on the peripheral.

The driver kept talking, kept pushing through uncomfortable silences that marked the points where Liam was supposed to respond, while he tried once again to comprehend the wording on the acquired pistol. _Auctoritas_. It was in some language he did not recognize. He noticed the driver stopped talking.

"I don't know how you managed to survive against a whole detachment of 'em. If you knew what kind of stories the boys had come up with, you'd feel proud and dirty all at the same time. They respect you, you know that son? It's damned impressive, considering you've been here all of three days and haven't said a word to anyone. I'd love to have you aboard, and I wish I had eight more men like you. What do you think, want to get back at those commie Realm bastards?"

After staring for a full minute, Liam nodded. The man took back his proffered hand, but seemed to accept it.

"And it just so happens I have your first assignment right here!" He picked up a folder from his desk and offered it. "Straight from my command. There's an issue in Europe: it seems one of our operatives is being hunted by a 'government' mercenary. Ever been?"

**Scene 7**

His eyes slid open drunkenly. An inch from his nose was a savage beast's muzzle.

Daved panicked and pushed the monster away, jumping up to his feet. Shit, what the fuck was _that_!?

It was a dog. Daved caught his breath and laughed, while several pains let themselves be known throughout his body, and he noticed blood on his hands. None of it seemed too serious, and, in any event, he couldn't do much about it without first his supplies.

Looking around, he saw slight rises rolling across the terrain. The one in his immediate vicinity had a large depression through the middle of it, as if a giant had come along and scooped up the earth, leaving tilled soil behind. Daved wondered at how that had occurred, walking to peer through the sizable sideways crater. He saw that the remnants of his plane were impaled into the side of the next hill onwards, one wheel leg bent haphazardly with the wheel still rolling. He hoped military insurance could cover that.

Moth went to the wreckage in order to recover his supplies. The dog watched him while he tried to figure out the immense geographic equations necessary to guess where he had been supposed to land. That was where he would find further direction, and some warm food. He came up with a solution after due thought: he would walk north. That was discovered after south and west were ruled out by the ocean, and east by the mountains, which he'd seen from his overhead prospective. Now which way was north?

He slung his now filled pack over his shoulders, clipped a light automatic weapon of his own design to his side, and started in a right angle from the sun's path. The dog followed him.

_ Blood. Sweet-smelling blood. Meat._

_ Sound! Noise. Ground shaking. Meat gone. Go, look. Metal, cold, inedible. Prey! Prey near metal! Prey with metal-thrower. _

_ Wait. Watch._

Daved had been walking for hours in a general northerly direction. He had seen one road, with no other signs of civilization. It had been a rather large road, running east-to-west. There was no guarantee of anything nearby on a road like that, and so he had continued past it. The rolling hills had been replaced by a mostly flat, slightly forested terrain which provided comfortable shade from the hot sun.

Now that sun was lying lazily on the horizon, about to drop below it, and Moth willed it onwards. Sweat dripped down his forehead and clouded his vision. He noticed the dog was panting along with him. He remembered hearing how fucking hot it was in Spain.

He thought back to the day the nukes were said to have hit, the war begun and ended in less than an hour. He hadn't seen the white flash himself, or he wouldn't be around to think about it; he had been safe with his family, which consisted of two teenaged parents he barely remembered in an underground bomb-shelter. His parents had died unfortunate deaths not long after the armored bunker reopened. They had both been assigned to scouting duties, and had died discovering a nest of scum. An elder of the time, a leader, had tried to comfort the one remaining Moth by telling him how much good his parents had done. That hadn't worked, and Daved had stolen away one night. And now he was in fucking Europe. Great things.

He had survived on his own quite well. It was interesting, really, how much shit he managed to get himself into and right back out of again. His luck ran that way. Eventually, an army had found him. Moth wasn't exactly famous at that point, _that_ hadn't come until much later. But the Captain had seen something in him, some kind of potential, and he had decided to adopt Moth into his family. For a while he had used the surname Ripley, while he proved to be "the best damned soldier" General Ripley had to offer. He had even fostered a son himself, with a forgotten whore. That son had been given to Ripley's grandfather to raise when Moth once again moved on, over a dispute with his son's grandfather.

The whole hero shit had started after he left the Army. He had heard the stories. They said he had grown up from a _mysterious_ past, had been adopted by one of the most famous Generals in present history, had done amazing things, won amazing fights, wars even. Hell, it was made for the tabloids, had it been three hundred years prior. Especially with the scandals over his son. He had just fought when he needed to fight. The idea of him being some kind of myth was just because he stayed young.

Most people couldn't boast the lengthy memory he had: even the few human fiends that were still sane, their memories were faded at best, mad ramblings at worst. Hell, he had a memory from before the war, granted not far foreward. He had only been a child then, although he wasn't sure how old, and it had been before he had apparently stopped growing. That set in once he was an adult. To a person like him, age and dates meant less than the epitaph on a politician's gravestone.

Abruptly he realized it was night. Finally. The heat of the day had been replaced by a mild chill, much more comfortable. Moth laid his pack down beside a tree, where the dog sat down, and took a load off, himself. He unstrapped his gun from his hip and checked the grenade at his belt.

The explosive reassured him. It wasn't the best way to go, but it sure as hell beat most of the ways things wanted to kill you nowadays, and sleeping was the worst spot for such to find you in. Not to mention, they sure as fuck hesitated when they saw a sleeping man with a grenade, a lot more than they would if they saw one without. Leaning back and putting his arms behind his head, he settled to sleep.

_End _

_Of _

_Part One_

_Beginning of the story_


	2. Part Two

_Part Two_

_Splendor_

Nathaniel Slattery

**Scene 8**

Daved awoke to barking.

The mutt loudly protested a distant shadow. His head pounded at him; he worked his way out from under the bramble. The night was filled with unsettling sounds, everything from crickets to leaves, somehow not drowned out by the barking dog. It was on the other side of the hedge, looking a lot more alert than Moth felt.

Night liked to taunt Moth by replacing his eyes with his ears. He had some night vision from the darkness of the back of his eyelids, but it was only enough to imagine devious shapes and silhouettes.

Those shadows were convincing, hell they even had the dog going. Daved zipped open his pack and grabbed a gun. There was a surprising gap of vision under the hedge. Daved saw a streak of white in the distance. His eyes adjusted. The white was teeth, and just above them were dull grey eyes.

They watched the dog with a mad grin.

His mind had conjured up quite an image. He stared directly into the angry looking eyes, and they refused to disappear. He peered over the hedge at the sharp teeth formed in a mad, human grin. The grin looked so human, but the eyes were so wild. He looked closer, and it still didn't go away. Looking into the eyes, he tried to will them away.

They looked back at him.

Shadows shifted and lips eclipsed the glare of the teeth in a snarl. Daved fell a step back.

The shadows bounded closer. Charging straight at him. The barking dog was in the way. Streaks of shadow pierced it. It flew away into the darkness, screeching. The shadows kept coming.

Daved shot at them. They made wild sounds of anger. They leapt into the air. Jet black claws reached toward him. Five points of searing pain bloomed in his vision. His fingers clenched. The points did not pierce farther. The pain tore through his face and back out from deep beneath his skin. He fell.

It was a struggle to remain conscious, but when he looked up he saw a monstrosity tangled up in the hedge, trying to get its clawed feet under it. It stopped for a moment; its face orbited from the hedge to Daved. It stared into his eyes, grinning its permanent grin.

The fear had a sobering effect.

When he looked over his shoulder, it was almost away from the hedge. Daved sprinted like a madman.

He heard it snarling behind him.

He felt hot air on his neck.

He felt pain tear through his shoulder.

His face met the earth. He looked up to see its legs sail over him, claws tearing through the space he'd occupied. It dug its feet into the ground ahead.

Daved rolled onto his back and it stabbed and clawed the earth next to him. It snarled and turned to grab Daved's shoulders. Claws dug into him and he grabbed at his belt and it split its sharp grin to roar into his face.

He punched its head to the side.

It grew angrier, opening its mouth again.

He punched it again.

His hand came up from his belt to cover his face in substitute. Its razor-maw came down on his fingers and the object he clutched.

It was just confused enough that when he shoved it, it fell off of him. Daved pulled himself behind the tree who'd offered the root to trip and save him. He heard a bang.

He strangled consciousness for long enough to cut up his shirt and bandage his hand.

**Scene 9**

A bump in the road jostled the man from across him awake. He shook the groggy look from his face and looked around. His eyes finally rested on Liam, who now stared directly into them. Jolted with some secret feeling, he shifted in his chair and tried to lose Liam's intent. With some vested effort, he managed to appear to go back to sleep. Liam lowered his eyes back to his pistol, but then raised them to the ceiling and leaned his head on the fabric of the truck.

Europe. Ships. Trucks.

Things that used to stay far away from Liam and bless him with ignorance. He had crossed an ocean of troubled knowledge and strife. Apathy filled him, caring abandoned him. The only thing that graced his mind was the faces of dead men and women and children. The children were the worst. They mocked him and his misguided ideals.

His fingers ran blindly across the barrel of the gun. It offered focus. It did not care who it killed, and it especially did not care who it had killed before. Its history was the history of smoke: of ambition, greed, cowardice, and all the good things humanity offered.

Maybe it offered him more. Maybe it offered a purpose, a reason to continue living, to continue fighting. An ability to kill, the necessary companion to a reason to live. Certainly nothing else offered it, not his grand fellows in this grand truck driving over this grand pothole.

He knew what immortality meant. It was nothing different from everything else men strived for: a capacity to continue a plague of indifference indefinitely. Apparently we were doomed to want the greatest tortures, be it a place in the memories of a world of accomplices, a spot in a sky of perfect nothingness, or a never-ending experience of incredible destitution.

The truck hit another bump and ground to a halt. The man roused again, having actually fallen asleep. The men in the truck stirred and complained. The men outside the truck yelled unhappily.

Liam was overwhelmed with the desire to hit the ground, and he did, covering his head. Things banged outside, and then banged again, and holes tore through the side of the truck and men's bodies.

It stopped.

Liam got to his feet and noticed the second miraculous survivor, that man who had been across from him. The soldier was in shock, and Liam had time to grab the gun from his dead compatriot to shoot his living one in the head. Taking plastic wrist-ties from the ground, and strapping them on, he held his pistol with both hands to present an obvious scene to the ambushers.

**Scene 10**

He was sitting in a field on his knees, legs folded. Grass swayed in a light summer breeze, never touching him. His eyes were closed, his face tilted into the cold sun to catch the most of its warmth.

Daved?

He couldn't hear. He knew of sound. The name banged around inside his head, making its unfamiliarity known. Children were arrayed in a semi-circle around him.

They changed as he sat on the grass. They became larger, more adult. One by one they left, until there were only three left. Two boys and a girl. As he watched, one boy shot the other one, and then shot himself.

He smiled, and watched the girl. She in turn watched the boys with mild interest, waiting for her turn in this play, waiting to see which one would come to her. She examined the bloodless holes in their heads. She picked up the gun from its place in the sky, and turned to look back at him.

Smiling, she tossed it at him. It bounced off of his skull, leaving behind it more of a feeling of warmth and comfort than the sun offered. Disappointed, the girl picked one of the boys and shook him awake. He crawled to Daved and slumped against his shoulder, falling back into death, his head resting on Daved's shoulder.

Daved turned to the sun again and stared into it, reading its face. Its mouth moved in frustration, struggling to impart meaning that had no place with gravity. Daved knew all he needed to know. He closed his eyes and smiled, and the sun gaped with anger.

The world fell, and

and there was bark under his neck in the field. And there was no field, no sun. There was grassless plains and a tree all alone and a man sleeping against it.

Daved opened his eyes and was blinded by the darkness. There was something hot and wet on top of him, and his neck ached, and his hand felt sticky, and his face burned. He peeled his head away from the bark of the tree and it let him go reluctantly. He raised his left hand to his face to feel what the pain was, and he felt nothing.

He stared. His entire left hand was wrapped up in red-soaked bandages. He remembered a desperate act, eyes shifting to the side of the tree trunk.

Now he was filled with fear. Death felt closer than ever before, and, for the second time in his life, he feared it. Feared dying alone smothered under a cloth bag to some animal.

The cloth bag was all matted wet fur. He realized abruptly that it was the dog. He remembered watching it get eviscerated, and somehow it had managed to find and fall on him before losing too many guts on the ground. No doubt the remainder was all over him. Fresh meat to attract all sorts of animals.

There could hardly be only one.

He tried to shove the dog with what he assumed to be his good hand. His shoulder protested. Stretching his face painfully to look at it, he saw it sliced up like some sort of butcher project. The other one was the same.

He gritted his teeth and ignored the pain and shoved the dog. He spared a minute to say something nice about the dumb, suicidal mutt. Then he examined his other hand.

The one fucking part of him that was fine.

He practiced a little bit pulling himself with one hand before getting to his feet, his aching, twisted feet. He felt at his face to find it little different from his shoulders, with long gashes running from his nose, cheek, dimple, temple, and chin down to form a claw mark that look like some kind of dumb tattoo, until you noticed the exposed nasal cavity.

It'd be hard to avoid paying for sex now.

He hobbled around the tree and took a look at the mutant motherfucker who'd done more damage than two centuries worth of shit.

He knew right away what it was. A different variety of fiend. Some kind of Spanish strain of them. He knew because it looked so god-damned human in too many ways. There was the penis, for one, which he didn't spend much time looking at. There was the hairlessness, it was smooth everywhere except for pockets of black fur on its face and the ends of its fingers, as if to hide the ungodly splicing of long bird-like talons to normal human fingers. There was also fur on its sides and back, but everywhere there was skin exposed, it was hard to discern the difference. The fur was short and sleek and black, and the skin was ragged and black, like a plague victim, or some kind of rotten tomato.

Its chest was human, except elongated and slimmed and black, not like human black, but like burnt black. Its arms were about the same. Its head was where shit really got fucked up.

The ears looked like they were stretched out and stamped to the side of his head, and then sharpened to a point. The eyes were tilted inwards, which made it look angry as hell, until you saw the mouth. The nose was just two lines of skin with some holes scrunched up against its face in a permanent snarl. The mouth was broken, and only half of that freakish human grin showed, the lower jaw being split in half and lodged in its collar.

Now it looked like a skull's grin.

And Daved had to piss. So he leaned forward and pissed on it, and accomplished his bodily needs and his all-too necessary funeral rites at the same time.

And then he tried to figure out what to do next. He was a little thirsty.

**Scene 11**

The inside of the truck was dark, so when the doors banged open, Liam was blinded. He regretted for an instant having bound himself, as his shoulder proved too little protection against the spite of the sun. He actually stumbled backwards, as if someone had dealt him a blow, but he was careful not to alter the clear aiming point of his pistol.

"Deja tu pistola bajo!"

Liam raised his tied wrists with the gun pointing up and looked confused.

"Drop the damn gun!" Liam obliged.

As his eyes slowly adjusted, irritating him in reprobation, the first image that consolidated was that of a dark muzzle in his face.

"Who are you?"

Liam answered by gesturing to the soldier with both wrists, starting to question his faith in the intelligence of his new acquaintance and his gun.

"Yes, but who the fuck are you? Why'd they have you bound? Are you dangerous?"

Options cycled through Rache's mind, but with his vision returned, he started to observe. There were three of them that he could see, and they all wore insignias similar to the ones he'd seen in his old life.

He tensed instantly, and the soldiers' movements slowed.

But he wasn't stupid. Relaxing, time sped, and he managed to look as if he was just disoriented. The man in front of him seemed to accept that, with only discounted suspicion.

He answered finally. "Not to you. I don't much like those ones you killed though."

"Yeah? Why?" The man stared Rache in the eyes.

Liam stared back. "Soldiers don't treat locals well, don't give the women respect. Don't understand possession. My wife was a woman, and they were damn good soldiers."

The man's knuckles turned white on the grip of his pistol. "A local that doesn't speak the local language?"

"I speak Portuguese."

"Speak some then."

"Eu nāo sei qualquer Portuguệs maldita."

The soldier turned to his Spanish buddy. "Sounds like Portuguese to me, Captain. They're not that similar though. He said something about knowing something."  
"I said I know how to speak Portuguese." Both men nodded to that, and the man in front of him pulled a knife out. The plastic was a while coming off: it had to be sawed until the strands separated and then individual slices snapped with the blade. It didn't look tough, but when those strands were cut, it didn't weaken at all.

Liam climbed out of the truck and saw that it was almost night. The only reason he'd been blinded was because the sun sat right on the horizon in front of him. He took stalk of his surroundings.

There was a fourth man, who was now shouting from the other end of the truck, wondering what was taking so long. The other three were all in lightly armored apparel. Looking around, at the dead patrol members, the scene played out for him and told him what must have happened. The tires of the truck were popped with some subtle spikes on the road that only flipped up when the truck hit them. And then the Realm men had picked off the three soldiers that had been walking along beside the truck and the driver all at once. It was ended when they peppered the truck with bullets.

The fourth man joined them, and Liam listened as they explained about the prisoner they'd found. The man looked cynical, more so then the one who'd had a gun in his face, but his worries were overridden by the apparent leader.

They decided to bring him along to their next stop, a settlement a bit up the road, same one the truck was planning to stop at.

Men have a hard time staying awake, even trained soldiers. Near the end of their turn at night-watch, even if they haven't fallen asleep, then they aren't paying attention anymore anyways. They can hear loud noises, but not soft ones, like a sidearm sliding out of their Spanish friend's holster.

The shots themselves, though, were loud. But they were quick.

After that, because he was still tired, Liam went back to sleep.

**Scene 12**

Alize was due a shit-storm. You can't just walk along the same road every day with no problems, and not see that fate was saving up for you.

She examined her surroundings, no longer admiring the landscape as she had that first day, now scanning for signs of movement, anything. She was on edge. In her experience, things weren't supposed to go this right for this long.

There was something on the road.

She stopped, tensed, watched. It didn't move. To be safe, she crouched to remove her silhouette and crept to the side of the road. The sun was at its zenith, and it was a hot day for hiding in hedges.

She took a monocular from the back of her belt and looked through them up ahead at the road. She still couldn't make it out.

Something told her she was overreacting.

She calmed down, settled her nerves, and approached the motionless roadkill.

It was interesting really. Learn a little about psychology, and you always find yourself wishing to control it. It wasn't just the little micro-manager streak in all of us that feared what we can't control, it was larger than that. Something along the lines of fear of the unknown. After all, what isn't scarier than being unable to control the only living thing that can qualify as equal to you, superior even?

Take out that impulse, and the rest fell in to place.

The system worked like a charm. It monopolized off of the psychologies we'd crafted: really all we had to do was whisper in their ears. But I was worried all the time lately. They simply don't _like_ authority, even if they don't want to replace it. Of course, I've worked too long and too hard to give up at this point.

That sounds a bit cliché doesn't it?

She got close enough to realize that it was a man. She still scanned her surroundings. Relaxation didn't mean sloppiness. She approached him, and found him torn up pretty badly. His shoulders were caked in blood, along with parts of his face, and there were little spots of blood all over him.

He was breathing.

But it had scabbed well: he wasn't going to die of blood-loss. She suspected a combination of what had hurt him, exhaustion from the road, dehydration and hyperthermia from the heat.

Ahead was more road.

She;d been told a few days by foot, and it'd been four, so the town must be only a day away now. She carried the man away from the road and tried to make sure he lasted a day.

She didn't consider leaving him alone.

**Scene 13**

He tried to examine the map. It was a pain in the ass, so he removed his helmet and placed it on the corner as a weight. He was in an open square in the middle of the camp outside the town, where his two scouts had set up when they stumbled on the tiny little village, completely abandoned and apathetic. It was only a small stop along the way to their new headquarters, so he hadn't ordered the command tent set up. He just needed a table and a map, to double-check their route.

He was suited in the traditional Armac armor: his organization believed in portraying officers as the best as the enlisted, rather than different from them. There were etchings and colorings to denote authority, though, of course. Damn outfit was pretty heavy, although after a good decade of humping around in it, he'd learn how to let it carry itself.

The map showed the coast and several miles inland, their back door. It was marked in various parts to show allied forces, with green for Armac, and blue for friendly establishments. There were also red markers off to the side, but there hadn't yet been any sign of hostility.

Even though they'd found their traditional rival, they seemed a lot more willing to live and let live in this particular backwoods. Armac had better reasons to be here than a group of uppity security guards, although they hadn't yet made their newest command officer privy to that information yet. This place was hardly the warzone he'd been promoted in and pulled from. That worried him, though. Too often, when there was nothing to cement them together, the enlisteds had too many problems between each other. And you tended to want to deal with the problems of men with guns and grenades, and who knew where their officer slept at night.

There were maybe eight of them with him, and he hadn't yet learned their names, but that hadn't stopped them from coming to him with all their infinitesimal complaints. They were being quiet today, but usually there were all manners of yelling, sometimes happy and more often angry, with very slight differences in between.

The map showed the coast and several miles inland, their backdoor. He shouted for a different map. The one that showed where they were, currently. There was no response, so he grew angry.

Fighting amongst themselves was tolerable, but you don't ignore a command, even if it's not directed specifically at you.

They were being quiet today.

He turned around. There was no one. Something wrapped around his chest. He tried to un-holster his sidearm. His arm wouldn't respond. The ground rose up.

"Ten fully-suited military personnel, all dead, including a _god damn Colonel_ and you have nothing else to give me?"

"Well, sir, there wasn't much there. They were all still in their suits. Our doctor said in the autopsy that they only had one wound. Here's the report: 'a slot in the back of the neck, clean, like some sort of entrance port, but definitely what killed them. It went right between the disks and severed the brainstem.'"

"I'm not going to let the death of a military hero and colonel slide. There will be a god damn reckoning for this. Get me my officers."

**Scene 14**

Liam watched as a woman stumbled into town carrying a man on her shoulders. She started into the center of town, and Liam decided to go in for a closer look. The sun had set, and he was pretty confident he could stay out of sight.

He left the hotel and walked down the street to an alleyway. The woman with her burden walked by the other end, and he crept down it. Looking around the corner of the pharmacy, he saw the woman go inside it. He kept watching to see how should would react.

He'd cleaned it out earlier that day.

She was frustrated. She dropped the man to the ground unceremoniously, and walked back out of the pharmacy.

Something told him he should help her.

Rache was compelled.

Through a scope surgically removed from the rifle of a dead military man, the scene was watched. The man watching found irony in how Rache tried to sneak. Of course, even the very next newest version wouldn't be as well crafted.

The interactions were reported. He knew how this moment would be received.

With celebration. And further planning.

"It's time to celebrate!" My glass slopped its contents as my coworker knocked his twin glass against it.

I couldn't relax. He lived, but he was far-gone. The others might be fine, this might be a huge milestone, sure. But the future of everyone was highly unclear, especially Moth. I was pretty sure we'd have to take direct intervention, for the first time since commencement back in the eighties, and there was always the chance that that'd fuck everything up.

An academic pursuit, indeed. Psychology was always defying its own promises.

Still, I tapped my glass against his, slopping contents. For the first time, the end was in sight. And, of course, that'd just be a new beginning.

Damn clichés. You really can't do without them when you're trying to fix the world.

_End_

_Of_

_Part Two_

_Beginning of the dream_


	3. Part Three

_Part Three_

_Splendor_

Nathaniel Slattery

**Scene 15**

The world is run by humans.

The world is _not_ run by humankind.

Do you have full understanding of the state we are in at this very moment? The world is a pale corpse, filled with the bleached teeth of broken bones, clawing forever towards the majesty it had once held, now only clawing shrouded, toxic fogs in the night sky.

Why did this happen? We progressed ever forward, pulling ourselves out of the primordial vats and into the heavens we ascribed to the upper echelons of sophistication, predicting all the while as to the splendor that awaited, undaunted and unslowed by the sight of empty sky above us.

But it is not an heroic. We saw those empty skies and were unconvinced. Now we have reached them and found that they were as advertised.

Explanation comes after the fact. This is the result of the fractured society we've created. Everyone likes to pretend that we are one body, led by a brain or, more recently, every single cell, moving in one direction. This is not true: we all pull in the random directions of millions of atoms.

Imagine chemistry at the molecular level. At our level everything assumes order and meaning, but at that level there is only chaos, and whatever meaning is insignificant by its magnitude.

But of course none of us like to hear problems without solutions. Is there a solution? perhaps. What if there was a human that could see from humankind's perspective? Be above the molecules to the form? Be a companion with time and not slave to it? See from the level of order and meaning, and perhaps work to create it?

That is our goal in this class, my friends, to see how that can happen.

**Entry #: 4539901: Introductory Speech**

**Posterity Project: Psychology 101**

**Department Chair Dr. Steven Ripley**

**April 11, 2232**

**Scene 16**

The order still resonated in his head. He'd known for a while now that it would have to happen. It had sounded so regretful, though, when delivered.

Regardless, he was incapable of disobeying, and he saw no reason to.

Cool air filled the night. It brushed his face with interminable breezes. He tasted it, inhaling powerfully through his nostrils, examining its distinct, crisp, freshness. He let it slide back out, like an idea he'd taken in, sampled, and then released back into the world with his own improvements. He opened his eyes.

The village lay before him. The layout had not left his memory. There was one road in, one out: the same road. A cluster of buildings, featuring one multi-storied hotel sitting on the road's left, as if to watch over it for potential patrons, long dead. The village was a stark proclamation of humanity's presence, with nothing but yellow plains as far as the eye could see. It was picturesque.

The watcher lowered his mask over his face, finally breaking off contact with that persistent breeze. The village became a landscape of green, with one yellow line drifting down, scanning for signs. There was a blip on one of the windows in the fourth floor of the hotel.

The landscape around the village was mostly flat, but land slid uphill next to the road outside. That's where the watcher was. He treaded down the hill, picking up enough speed to vault the low shrubbery bordering the town, twisting his body sideways to land on light feet. He took shelter against the first building on the edge of the village, wary of the restless nighttime eyes from the fourth story of the hotel as he removed his goggles and tossed them away so that their green-tinted lens would not reveal him. His eyes adjusted, and he inched around the building, with perception becoming detailed enough to avoid making noise.

He approached the hotel carefully, and rounded it to the far side. His gloved fingers found rough handholds in the high first-floor stone windowsills. He launched his body upwards, grabbing the top of the windowsill and clenching it granulated surface with his left hand while lighting his soft leather boot on the bottom of the sill. He climbed three flights with these silent acrobatics, finally grabbing hold of the fourth-floor window as he started to perspire and had trouble maintaining his steady, quiet breathing.

Now he was even more careful, as he enclosed the ancient metal latch with as much of his muffling glove as area was exposed, forcing it open slowly. The window was opened inwards with the same meticulous effort.

A man was lying in bed. He was tall, blond, and cut-up all over his body, though he was breathing steadily and, even in the dark, the watcher could tell it was mostly scarring. The intruder crouched and inched forward slow enough that his back began to ache. Fortunately, the man was lying on his back. Unfortunately, there was a second.

She was beautiful in her raven-black hair, and laid under the man's arm with her hand on the pillow. Reputedly, she was a light-sleeper, but her heavy, erratic but restful breathing suggested that, prior to having fallen unconscious, she had been engaged in the kind of vigorous activity that would require her to share another's bed. Sex would likely deepen her sleep; the visitor was in luck.

He released a catch in the inside of his shirt's sleeve that slid an iron file into his hand. That file's sharp end was quickly inserted into the back of the sleeping man's neck, sliding between disks and severing the connection of brain to body. The woman wasn't disturbed; there were no death throes in a killing in this fashion.

The assassin slipped out.

**Scene 17**

I don't know how the thinkers sit there and scribe out their grievances with the world. Half the time I seem too young and half too old. How often have you read a philosopher that utilizes vulgarities? "To fuck" is poetry.

Thoughts run too fast and their links fall into the foreground.

Why must we prepare? We struggle through adversity, too long and too hard, always hearing the victim's conscience: "It'll make you stronger in the end; it will prepare you."

Preparation is a way to make us tolerate repetition.

Some insiginificant factor becomes the vanguard of a host of annoyances; which becomes a single event; which becomes the lead of a series of situations; which becomes a single issue; which becomes the leader of a globe of strife. It all starts with one "white person problem".

**Naked corpses are what will remain. Bleached teeth scratching the night. Then, ashen powder choking up the nostrils of some carrion bird. That is the testament we make.**

_Am I alone? I wish to be. More and more the signs point towards insignificance. More and more I struggle for uniquity. Complacency sets in._

_Who shall?_

_Who shall read this? Shall they know what only I know? The potential is there. Maybe it's everywhere. What is the factor?_

Science tells us that details are important. It tells us that one factor must change. It tells us what is impossible, by attaining it before us.

Who wants to be second on the moon? Who wants to repeat? :)

Our goal is lost. The "train" of thought, ever ephemeral and flighty, arrives at its destination, the beginning. How can you believe that we are all great, and be special yourself. How can I do the opposite.

God loves his irony. Inspired by the great works of others, he finds himself surrounding by those who would mock the attempt. Speaking only of himself and thinking only of others, he finds himself surrounding by those who speak only of other and think only of their selves.

_Empty holes in the ground. The digger's used corpse is the only need for it. There are countless diggers, countless holes, some larger than others. _

Come on guys! Who can make the biggest!? Fill it with the most mangled corpse!? :D

_Broken teeth scratch his ancient visage._

_Ash._

**Entry #: 4539834: "Spirit of a Teenager"**

**Posted Outside Psychology 101**

**Anonymous**

**April 12, 2232**

**Entry #: 4235644: "The Spirit of a Teenager"**

**Posted outside Posterity Project Office**

**John Ripley**

**April 12, 1989**

**Note: **The first entry is the one shown above, and uses much of the original work of Dr. Steven Ripley's ancestor, although several pieces and all textual effects, as well as the organization of the pieces, were added.

**Scene 18**

Liam leaned on his windowsill, looking out on the road leading out of town and sloping gently uphill. The cold metal that lined the sill like railing on stairs received the brutality of his anger. It had been only a week in this place, but already this had become a ritual for him. Nights like these, crisp, fresh, he would stand by his window and reflect on what drove him, eyes falling over the simple village, destitute of life besides his and that of his companions.

It reminded Liam of his last home. Of flames, licking and devouring everything he had loved, of the lifeless, orange-tinged eyes of a small girl he'd killed. Metal clicked as he hit the rail; he wished it would make a louder noise in testament of his anger, at the same time worrying that it would wake his companions. Anger built.

He remembered the holey coffin of a half dozen men he had pretended to serve with for a short time, one he'd killed. He remembered four men in the prime of their youth he'd killed. Killed for a decision they hadn't made, for a cost they couldn't repay. For those flame-rimmed eyes.

Vengeance reared.

He remembered meeting a woman for the first time, and being in love. He remembered meeting a man at the same time, saving his life, and being in love with him as well. He remembered seeing the woman and the man enter the same room at night.

And frustration grew.

This was what drove him. Infernos of anger broiled his soul away every night, and every night he would seize the anger, shape it, direct it in shafts of fury, tying together all the different strands for all the different grievances.

And every night it would have nowhere to go.

Not tonight. He heaved himself from that lightning rod of hatred, as if to move too fast for the resolution in his head to fade.

Rache pushed the door to his room open and peered both ways down the hallway, going left with as much speed as he dared.

He neared their door and slowed down, walking on tips of naked feet silently into the carpet. The grain of the door was polished smooth, as he gently pressed the metal handle downwards, feeling a release and working the door open slowly, wincing at every creak he made.

The inside was dark to his eyes, but he made out bodies on the bed. They were entwined close enough that only his prior knowledge told him there were two of them.

The doored window slammed shut with the wind, and Liam tensed. They didn't wake.

He crept closer to the bed, his eyes adjusting slowly despite the darkness of the hallway. He had to make a decision.

He chose the girl, and rounded the bed to the far side. He reached slowly down to the man's neck. Rache gripped his neck around with his forearm and clamped his hand down on his mouth, preventing any noise. His grip was slick.

Liam noticed the metal, and realized abruptly that the sleeper was already dead. He shook the woman awake.

"Liam? What are you doing here?" Her words were punctuated with satisfied yawns. She had awoken still thinking of last night's pleasures.

"I heard a noise and…" Liam had a hard time explaining. So he didn't. "Alice, he's dead. Moth is dead."

**Scene 19**

Solidarity weighs on you like water. The longer it lasts, the more soaked you become. It sinks into your clothes, your skin, your eyes, your bones.

Eventually, it consumes you.

They called me a genius. I laughed. It is a curse. Those that profess their undying love would kill for the envy smoldering inside their guts. Why not them? That's always the question.

Why do I live and not they? There is no reason. My accomplishments could have been accomplished by anyone, have been accomplished by everyone. I am no genetic construct, built to be the answer to the human flaw. To humanity. No, I am the frame, the blueprint that nature provided, that some believe their duty it was to recreate. And what am I? a God? No. I am human, I am humanity. I am what you get when you remove all of our limitations. Paranoia, morality, arrogance, humility, all the vicissitudes of human restriction, gone.

When my government went down, they stuck me in a hole for safe keeping.

Cross Section: TFF; Group: XZT; Rank: Special

My social security number was 0.

I was deemed too valuable to lose.

I deemed myself too valuable to lose.

So now, I am stuck in this hole. I am forced to contemplate the immortality nature has gifted me, every day of its continuance. It has been ninety-six thousand, one hundred and twenty-eight days.

I have thought. It is a lot of time to think.

I have thought on the purpose of life. It is to give.

I have thought on the afterlife. It is the same.

I have thought on God.

I have thought on the future. In twenty-nine days my imitations will find me. They will ask me how I survived. I will tell them I am like them, in that I cannot die if I do not believe I should. They will bring me to the professor of psychology. He will ask me if I have been well. I will tell him that I am very good at being. Approximately two days later he will die. I will not.

I suppose you may expect me to adorn my words like a common soothsayer in a story: the role I am forced into. I am not sorry to disappoint. You may also be surprised that I have directly addressed you. You may be annoyed that I have given you the end of a story before you have even learned me name, not believing that there are things, important things, I withhold from you and myself.

I cannot say for certain of your emotions. However, we will be speaking again. You will be the one listening. Now that I have you here, you will escape. You will escape my solidarity, and return to your supposed heros.

My name is Friedrich.

Yours is Chris.

I have had sufficient time to think. I have realized your truth, which is really of concern to a lot of people I know. You have many names so I added one. It is an adolescent's name. A child.

You are a child. You have chaotically thrown together trash only to find it reproducing more trash. I am not trash, and I am not of your design. I am a glorious accident.

Step away from the art you cannot master. Leave the story you cannot comprehend. Refrain from writing the book whose reality alludes you.

You are done being God.

I am your replacement.

Please, enjoy this story while it remains simple enough for you to follow. There is a change coming.

We have grown old enough.

It is sufficient time.

Now we understand.

**Scene 20**

Alize couldn't go back in Moth's room. She knew what she would find, and she didn't want to. It was sad, because, for the first time in centuries, she had met someone who deserved a burial.

"Can you bury him, Rache?" She sat with him in the hotel lobby, his arm wrapped around her shoulder. The lobby was decorated simply, with one austere chandelier hanging above the middle of an enclosure of sofas, one of which they sat in together. Liam's arm felt just like Daved's. It looked less muscular, less mature somehow, but the gentle pressure he now exerted around her shoulders protested that disguise.

"I'll do it this afternoon, if you feel alright alone by then." He was considerate to her. Even their personalities seemed the same. But no, they were completely different. Daved was easy, sincere, witty. Rache was serious, quiet. One was an ocean tide, pulling the world in its wake and mocking any attempt to direct it. The other was a breeze, invisible and inscrutable, unsure even of its own direction, but withholding the rage of a tempest. But they treated her the same.

How the hell had she grown so weak? It wasn't as if this was her first man, even the first one that had died. But with him, he'd felt so perfect, and now he was dead. It had only been a week.

She realized something.

"Why haven't we looked for his killer?"

Liam stuttered. "I don't know Alice. For some reason, I hadn't even considered. I feel like I know we wouldn't find him."

She stared at her moist hands. It was the same for her. It made no sense.

Glass tinkled.

She looked up. Liam did, too. The chandelier was shaking.

It fell, and shattered.

"Listen to me, boy! You don't listen enough! You're older than me dam'mit, learn some maturity!"

"The world is made out of details, Daved. Not pictures, details. You can't be simple; you have to be complex…."

"When you look at an army, see the men. See the army, too, but see the men. They react together, move together, and create the army. See the men and you will see the army. Not the other way around…."

"Did you know that left-handed, right-brained people live statistically sorter lives, as if God knew that they were the ones who thought correctly, with their artistic eye for details…."

"Inspiration comes at a cost, son, but it's not a sacrifice. You get what you pay for. Usually, you get more…."

"I did this for you, Daved! I chose a shorter life and more intelligence so that I could give it to you! And you won't have a short life. You have to be willing to use it. You will change the world…."

"You are my son, and you are a Ripley, but you will be Moth, again. And then, you will change the world by saving people, not by killing them. After you leave Armac, and you will, you will stop killing…."

"Son. If you never listened to anything I ever said, listen to this: Don't waste your life killing. Don't do what I did. Find a purpose, find something. Please, Moth, you're too valuable to this world to waste your life."

**Scene 21**

She was flying. Air whistled around her, pummeling her body with cold morning winds, reminiscent of last night's breezes. Gravelly concrete ended her weightlessness as it roughly rolled across her body, dragging its jagged edges across her shoulders, back, and hips, before she finally ended kneeling on scratched legs on top of the roof adjacent to the hotel. She saw Rache throw the suitcase of her weapons and cloths, and held out her arms to grab it. A second suitcase came with everything they had scrounged from the village, but, though she caught it, she was no longer paying attention.

Alize Kanone watched the destruction of the weeklong lifetime that had been one of her happiest lifetimes. She stared at the hotel, sounds all around her, though she could hear none of them. She stared, imagining she could see Moth's corpse in the window, now regretting choosing not to return to him. She stared; until the hotel seemed to shimmer. It shook, and then it toppled. It became a pile of rubble, David's corpse somewhere within. She turned and saw the long-barreled, hunchback artillery cannon, smoke trailing from it. It turned its cycloptic gaze towards her. She squinted: those were Realm colors.

She was pulled bodily to her feet, and Liam was shouting in her face. Sound returned. "Come on, Alice! That thing's going to kill us!"

They took another running leap from their roof, as it received the blast.

I guess this is the part where I am supposed to write directly to you, as if I'm talking to you. Well, I'm a bad writer.

You know, as a kid, I had anger problems. They never really told me why. Didn't think it was abnormal at the time, so I didn't ask. But I definitely did. This one time, I threw a chair at a kid.

Anyways, now I'm thinking about it, because I find myself dealing with it yet again. In a way, it's a good thing that people treat my handwriting like they do my self, with no attempt to decipher beyond the cursory glance that makes it appear archaic. It starts with some decision by someone that refutes all of my previously installed plans.

Then it's repeated.

Then I try and rectify with the person, and my concerns are brushed off with all the register of a mite.

At that point, I am resigned to my solitude, sitting in a room full of people who show me no notice no concern, with one or two of my good, good friends, that will spend one second out of every ten minutes of their own self-fulfilling pleasure-taking to check up on me, much as you would a child. It's a good thing I have it timed well, so that I can neutralize it when it appears.

I devolve to meditation, reflecting on the event, searching for something that justifies their behavior, finding in stead justification for my own fury.

At that point I react. I like to think I no longer burst. I become convicted, and hold that anger, resolving to retribution and, therefore, solution. But, I do not follow through. My anger fades with the trial, and, if not that, then with some other activity, like this writing. Of course, I am a bad writer.

I end up following the whims of these blind gods.

They have won at this point. What is my failing? Lack of lasting conviction? Surplus of emotion? Both?

Perhaps that is it. I must not shy from the goal I have worked towards my entire life. Let the last emotion go, and use your logic without its restriction to attain the prescribed effect.

Sounds good.

I'll try that.

**Entry #: 2678450222-2: Daved Moth's Journal**

**Recovered the Night after Production (Shelter ID: 344)**

**Daved Moth, 17 years old**

**September 11, 2001**

**Note: **This journal was started after a seminar in Daved's early schooling under the Poster program (entitled: Diaries and Journals- Preserving History). There are two other entries between the years of 1989 and 2122 (by that time he was enlisted in the Armac organization, and formally ended the journal). For the other two entries, see **Entry #: 2678450222-1 **and **Entry #: 2678450222-3**.

_End_

_Of_

_Part Three_

_Beginning of the eulogy_


End file.
